DGCA issues fresh SOPs for chopper ops in hills
Pilots flying helicopters in the Himalayas will receive specialised training based on a new, more stringent set of rules to avert frequent accidents in the mountainous region, India’s aviation regulator told HT.
“Keeping in view the incidents and a fatal accident that took place in 2022 , the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has instituted additional measures this year to ensure safety of operations,” an official of the DGCA said. A chopper crash near the Kedarnath shrine in the Garhwal Himalayas in Uttarakhand killed six pilgrims and the pilot in October last year.
Ensuring flight safety in hilly areas has been a recurring concern, with the Kedarnath area alone reporting at least nine helicopter crashes between 1990 to 2019. “The DGCA has introduced an additional hill check for pilots operating to helipads at 10,000 ft from this yatra season,” an official of the civil aviation ministry said, adding “This is being done to ensure that pilots operating... at such high altitudes are trained and checked for safe operations... ”
Four Hindu shrines in Uttarakhand, known as Char Dham, are a popular pilgrimage undertaken between May and September every year. Kedarnath is one of them. All four shrines are at high altitudes where weather conditions can change rapidly.
Explaining the importance of the hill check, Uday Gelli, president of Rotary Wings Society of India, a non-profit professional society, said that it requires special skills to operate helicopters at high altitudes as air density starts declining there.
“When helicopters are being operated at maximum permissible weights at those altitudes, pilots are prone to make mistakes if they do not have sufficient high altitude flying experience,” Gelli said, calling the check a “step in the right direction”. “Merely having flown in high altitudes decades earlier does not mean that a pilot is proficient. Pilots with long breaks and not much experience at high altitudes should go for refresher training with experienced and current pilots,” he added.